I’m crossing off two days at once here because Day 6 was spent on the road and as I’m going through all of our zillions of photogs, it appears that nobody shot any on Day 6 (GASP!!). But hold on to your undies, kids, cuz Day 7 is totally gonna make up for it.

Well, it will after we get the map out of the way…(Oh stop! You know you love the map! Geez!)

Day 6 took us from Point D (D is for Dildo…c’mon…you remember this…) to Point E which is a spot called Holyrood. We chose this place to camp for two days for a bunch of reasons, the first of which was that it offered us a chance to visit with our wayward friend, Wanda.

Wanda came to our campground (Blue Fin) under the lure of a campfire weenie roast. Who could resist that? Not Wanda, obviously. Sadly, it was rainy and freezing, so we had to ix-nay the eenie-ways. We huddled up inside the trailer while our friend regaled us with hilarious tales of her recent assimilation into Newfie society. I guess you’d call her a Nouveau Newf, but she is still a work in progress. So far, she’s managed to twang her long I’s but she has yet to master that odd H business.

Wanda, girl, if the massage thing doesn’t work out, please consider stand-up as an option. This ole world needs more laughter. XO

The next morning, Shari, Bob, and I set out to explore. We had a 1:30 reservation with Gatherall’s for a Puffin (!!!) and Whale Tour. In the meantime, though, we had poking about to do.

One of the things we encountered was a small herd of Newfie Mutant Mallard Ducks. They were unlike any mallards I’ve ever seen before. Aside from their physical modifications, they were all sound asleep right beside (almost on) the road! In fact, we had roared right past them before I managed to yell, “Stopppp!!” (Which is code for “I saw something interesting and I’m gonna leap out now and shoot several thousand photogs of it.”) And, how the heck do you fall asleep standing on one foot right beside the road anyway? You’d think the cars whooshing by would topple them, wouldn’t you? It’s just weird, I tell ya.

Right beside the road!

Female showing mating damage

Male with weird while neck ring

Odd markings

Wanda quacks me up…

Later on, after a lovely lunch of I-can’t-remember-what, we headed on over to Gatherall’s for our wee boat ride. If you happened to be along on last year’s adventure to Maine, you’ll recall that I go a little off my stick when it comes to puffins. I can honestly admit that there has been no improvement in that area. I can try to be cool about it, but it just bubbles up and explodes. There’s a lot of grinning involved…and worse.

Happily, there weren’t very many people in our group. Happilier, almost immediately one of the crew spotted a humpback whale. It was hilarious trying to get a shot off while clinging to the railing for dear life, not to mention that by the time you see the blow, it’s waaaaay too late. The best I could do was this lovely blowhole shot (I know! I’m amazing!):

Shari had a bit more luck:

So did Bob:

Unfortunately, this beautiful creature was just cruising and not eating or playing, so no action shots. Still…a humpback! How cool is that?!

On our trip to Maine last year, I was beyond excited about the twenty or so puffins we’d seen. On this tour there were thousands of them!! I was in puffin heaven! Still and all, the lil rascals make it nigh on impossible to get a decent shot – for footballs with stubby wings, they sure can move!

Read any tourism brochure and it’ll tell you that the moose population is up to well over 100,000 on the island now and that a massive culling is in progress. HAH!! (again)

There are road signs giving dire warnings about the moose on the roads and you’ll hear tales of how the local won’t even go out of their homes for fear of being trampled to death. Say it with me now….HAH!!!

Folks, it’s all a fargin’ lie! It’s an elaborate hoax cooked up by some sort of Newfie Tink Tank to suck the tourists in. So well co-ordinated is this deception that when we enquired of an Official at one of those Tourist Information places, “So…where the heck are all these moose we keep hearing about?” Her reply was (get this), “Oh geez, dere was a bunch of ’em just run by dat window right dere just a little while ago…” HAH and DOUBLE HAH!!!! What a load!

Just because some Newfie Tourism Committee sat around brainstorming ways to increase tourism traffic while sampling the Screech, doesn’t mean we’re gonna fall for it. It probably went something like this:

All (imaginary) dialogue aside, the evidence mounts. We’ve now been in Newfoundland for six days and we’ve seen exactly zero moose. To further damn the Moose Conspirators, we’ve met and spoken to exactly zero fellow travellers who have seen so much as a single moose! Oh the locals are holding fast to their minute-ago sightings and brudder-in-laws whose crew-cab pickup was Bullwinkled to an early death. Hell, there are even local radio reports warning that the moose detector lights at such and such a location are out again and gawd-helpya if yer headed dat way. AND!!! On a hike through the bush, we encountered what appeared to be a pile of moose poop…but there was a guy standing just off the path with a fargin’ shovel behind his back!

Pfft! What a crock!!

Nice try, Newfoundland Tourism Board! You might have the rest of the world bamboozled, but you ain’t foolin’ us!

If you can’t handle being out of touch with the world for a while, don’t put Newfoundland on your list of places to visit. Cell service is sporadic at best. WiFi? Fuggedaboudit! Is there a trade-off, though? Oh, you bet your bippy there is!

Arches Provincial Park

When you pull your head up from you stone-dead cellphone, you are afforded a rare opportunity to step back into a time when life was simpler, work was harder, and people were as good as their world. You also get to spend unhurried hours travelling through a harsh and spectacular landscape that is unmangled by the machinations of man. You bask in the warmth of a people who are not only not mistrustful of strangers but who welcome them like long lost friends.

The minute we drove off of the ferry and onto The Rock (there never was an apter nickname), our connection with the outside world died, but y’know, we didn’t miss it at all. Newfoundland is a beam-me-up-Scotty experience.

Being the observant souls that we are, we began to accumulate assorted interesting observilizations (it’s a word if I say it is, okay?) about Newfoundland and Newfies:

1. There’s something really weird going on with the trees in Newfoundland. For some reason they seem prone to falling over. I’m not sure if this is because of laziness or what but it’s damned odd if you ask me. (I was sure I had a couple of pictures of this phenomenon but I’ve been looking for an hour now and I can’t find them. Just pretend I showed you, k?)

2. There are no raccoons, skunks, or snakes in Newfoundland. Because of this, there are no formerly-furry-critter road pizzas here. Because of this, there are no vultures either.

3. One may become an Honorary Newfie upon completion of The Screeching In Ceremony. During the said ceremony, the prospective Newfie must imbibe a substance which has been aptly named Screech (it tastes like a cross between kerosene and yak pee…don’t ask how I know this…), and then kiss a cod fish. I imagine that Newfies secretly find it hilarious that tourists fall for this.

4. All non-oceanic bodies of water, regardless of size, are called “ponds.”

5. Water in motion, again, regardless of size or ferocity, is called a “brook.”

6. There are actual places in Newfoundland called Come By Chance, Dildo, Halfway Point, and Nicky’s Nose.

7. Non-Newfies are called Mainlanders no matter where they are from.

Now that we’re back in Internetland, I’ll make up for lost time (hopefully) and show you all the things we did. In the meantime, here is a small sampling of the zillions of photogs we took: